


Bent Lever

by EmilyArmadillo



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, No Plot/Plotless, airbender parker, earthbender hardison, firebender eliot, waterbender sophie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28653348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilyArmadillo/pseuds/EmilyArmadillo
Summary: Portraits of the thieves as benders.
Kudos: 10





	Bent Lever

Water  
Sophie, and whoever else she may chose to be, is a waterbender. While she chose not to pursue martial arts training, it would be a mistake to think she's not a master. She suits the element of change to her own needs. While water whips and waves are impressive, Sophie is suited to more subtle arts. Refreezing the melting ice of a mark's drink helps them lose track of how long they'd been talking to her. Warming the blood in their cheeks speeds the illusion of infatuation, while chilling the sweat on the back of their neck simulates intimidation. She likes it best when her cons come to fruition on a full moon, when she feels most powerful. 

Earth  
Hardison never saw himself as one of the stout, muscular earthbenders on television. He labeled himself geek instead and gradually found ways his bending complemented the man he was. The first skill he taught himself was sculpting; making rock figurines to fill in his action figure collection. His desire to make his figures bend and pose led him to an interest in engineering, which led to technology. For years he thought computers and earthbending were separate, incompatible. And true enough there are no rocks to throw when one is writing code, but earthbending isn't just an activity, it is a sense. Hardison started to notice that he could feel the particles of earth in a motherboard just below the fiberglass. When he buys equipment, platinum and palladium whisper the quality of a hard drive. Once in a great while Hardison raises a pillar of earth to lift a satellite dish, but he doesn't consider that nearly as useful as his ability to find the tungsten-silver-copper fingerprint of his smartphone wherever he left it.

Fire  
Firebending is not uncommon among hitters. Their business is power, and so is the element. Eliot knows many martial arts, even other bending styles, but classic combative firebending was his first. After he left the army, he was called on less for bending and more for fire. Just fire, untamed and hungry, very different from the self-controlled practice that Eliot preferred. He left that life and found a different one, where knives cut vegetables and fire belonged under the pot. He makes an excellent crème brûlée.

Air  
These are Parker's skills: acrobatics, lockpicking, pickpocketing, hotwiring, airbending. It is fitting that air is known as the element of freedom when it has kept her free so many times: propelling her over laser grids and blowing dust in the eyes of guards, even fanning the flames of her stepparents' house. When she opens her glider and jumps of a building's roof, no one can catch her.


End file.
